


Familiar Strangers

by imitateslife



Category: Frankenstein & Related Fandoms, Frankenstein - Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Fluff, Bisexuality is a thing, Childhood Sweethearts, Elizabeth Lavenza is a saint, F/M, I am so here for bisexual representation, M/M, Pining, Pining everywhere, Post-Canon, Reunion, blink and you'll miss it sexy times, is it a crossover if one of your sources is an adaptation of the other?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 17:32:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9559748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imitateslife/pseuds/imitateslife
Summary: Seven years after creating the Prometheus, Victor Frakenstein no longer believes anyone will seek him out. Seven years after losing her betrothed, Elizabeth Lavenza will do whatever it takes to find him. But after seven years, can they call what they have love?Crossover between "Victor Frankenstein" (2015) and "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley.





	

The years following the demise of his Prometheus passed slowly for Victor Frankenstein. He traveled from country to country, restless and paranoid. Rumors of a mad doctor haunted his every step and so, he took on names and identities that did not belong to him. Here he was Doctor Victor Beaufort; there he was Doctor Henry Lavenza. But in Germany, where he eventually settled – a small cottage in a small hamlet – he took on the name Victor Straussman. A good, solid Germanic name, despite his unmistakable British accent.

It tied him intimately to the person he missed most.

From Germany, he wrote to Igor. Victor’s letters were not elegant; most were short. Afforded little time between delivering babies and resetting broken bones, he wrote when he could and about what he could. It felt so banal compared to the conversations he’d once had with Igor. Absent from the letters were the grand dreams they’d had of life after death. But between the lines, if one read as carefully as Igor surely did, there were hints of Victor’s newest great work. The strangest things inspired a man. Holding a blood-slick newborn, tangled in its umbilical cord and strangled, Victor thought of another baby – colder, dead not an hour – whose life he had once restored. And so he excused himself from the midwives and half-delirious mother. Hooked the child to a machine of his own design. And the jolt of electricity, the gentle breath of doctor to patient, and suddenly the child breathed on her own. She gave a cry that mother and midwives heard and so, Dr. Victor Straussman was heralded as a miracle worker. He had great success in giving life to the lifeless. Perhaps not creating life from death – or from nothing at all – but doing some little good in the world for a people whose livelihoods depended on harvests and other such unpredictable, mad and cruel factors.

Between the lines about curing coughs, growing a medicinal garden, and leading an ordinary life, Victor’s letters hinted at the extraordinary.

Igor’s letters told of an even more banal life. He’d married his acrobat in a small, church ceremony. Became partner in a private practice. Had a daughter.

 _We named her Victoria,_ Igor confessed.

 _In that case,_ Victor retorted. _I hope she takes after her father in intellectual pursuits._

But between the lines, there was a strange ache that Victor could feel in his bones, soaking him like rain.

_You said you would call for me one day. Even if you do not need me, I should like to visit you someday._

But Victor could not risk exposure. He readied himself with an arsenal of excuses. He moved from town to town so frequently that guests would never be a possibility. Much as he missed Igor, he feared for his safety more and the safety of his dearest friend’s young family. It would not do to rob Victoria of a father so loving and good as Igor.

At times, Victor found himself envying Igor’s position. How easily he had slipped into London’s society, how ideal his domestic life must have been. Victor was not suited for domesticity. He had wandering feet; a traveler’s mind. He was content in his strange way to be a stranger in every town, to do his good work and disappear to experiment elsewhere before it was discovered that his miracles were no miracles at all.

But sometimes he dreamt of a body curled up beside him in his bed. Warm skin on warm skin. A heartbeat to sooth his restless mind. Sometimes, he dreamt it was Igor beside him. But sometimes, he remembered a deathbed promise and guilt gnawed at his stomach as he thought of his mother’s frail and dying frame; the living hand he clung to. Elizabeth. Her warm hand remained steady in Victor’s as his arm began to tremor at the utter helplessness of watching his mother die. Already, he had seen Henry die – crushed by ice and snow, succumbed to hypothermia, all in an effort to save Victor’s worthless life. And now, his mother.

"My children," she said, "my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union…”

There was more she said but in that moment, Victor had looked at the fine sweep of Elizabeth’s cheekbones, her clear, blue eyes turned liquid with tears and wondered how he – with his violent passions and fantastical ambitions – could ever be worthy of such a grounded girl. She had been his only companion upon Henry’s death. His cousin, his friend; the one to rub salves onto the bruises Father left and to speak kind words when no one else thought Victor deserved them. She was all softness and light. Brilliant in her own right, clever, well-spoken, charming. He always thought some baron was destined to pluck her up and that his mother’s wish was folly. He neither deserved Elizabeth nor could he be desired by her. She deserved someone whose temperament matched her own, just as Igor did. Igor had his acrobat and surely, by now, Elizabeth had her fairy-tale ending.

It ate at him on sleepless nights that he did not know her fate and had no means of knowing it. And so, on a whim, he wrote to Igor and asked him to seek out Elizabeth Lavenza.

 _Do not tell her of me,_ he instructed. _But report your findings._

Igor’s next letter contained no details of Elizabeth. Anxiety knotted in Victor’s stomach, but he had a flock that needed tending. Influenza gripped the town that autumn and so, Victor found himself administering cough remedies aplenty and chastising patients about germ theory. Autumn withered slowly to winter and Victor retreated to his cottage with the books he’d amassed since his arrival. He read the ancient alchemists his father had dismissed and forbidden in his childhood. He read the latest medical research from America, from Vienna and dreamt of traveling once more. One night, wrapped up in tales of the Philosopher’s Stone, of changing metals into gold, and dreaming of the fabled – and utterly implausible – El Dorado of the Americas, Victor began to drowse before his fireplace. He seldom slept. He never had been the sort. Too restless, too haunted. But his mind caved to the needs of his body after so many hours and the warmth went to his head.

At first when he heard the knock, Victor thought it was a part of some dream. But as the rapping became louder, insistent, he snapped awake and rushed to the door. He was so used to needy visits to his home by the most desperate and pitiful. He opened the door, expecting a plain faced farmer or harried school teacher; a broken bone, a bout of nausea.

But the woman at the doorstep seemed neither plain nor harried. Age had refined her features. The blades of her cheekbones were sharpened with years. Her elegant neck was wrapped in a scarf that seemed to elongate it. Dark blonde curls framed her face and her clear, blue eyes held a look of overwhelmed emotion. There was no mistaking Elizabeth, for all the years and miles that separated them. And for once in his life, Victor Frankenstein was rendered speechless.

Ought he be furious with Igor for not keeping the secret Victor had begged for? Should he be alarmed at a familiar face in a town where he had shed his old life successfully? The fire in his eyes seemed to flare and burn Elizabeth as she gasped and drew back slightly. But then Victor wrapped his arms around her and crushed his childhood love to his chest. Tears pricked his eyes and he stroked her hair as he held her tightly to assure himself she was real. Her tears soaked his shirt and there was no telling how long they stood in his doorway, weeping and clinging to each other as they had so often done as frightened children. When they extricated themselves from one another and sat in the parlor before the fireplace, she sat more regally than Victor could recall. The Elizabeth he remembered like to tuck herself small in the corner of sofas, watching keenly and laughing at Victor’s antics and stories. This Elizabeth sat with a straight back and held her teacup just so that Victor couldn’t help but envy that she, too, had gotten her fairytale ending. What other explanation could there be?

“You’ve changed,” she murmured at long last, turning to face him on the sofa. Her hand flitted to his hair and stroked back the premature shock of gray near his temple. “For a moment, I didn’t think it was you.”

“That’s reassuring.” Victor grasped her wrist and lowered it. He did not let go. “If you did not recognize me, Scotland Yard surely won’t.”

“Then you’ll come home?”

Victor laughed.

“I have no home,” he told her. “Not even here.”

“Home has changed so much since you left,” she continued. “Your father…”

Victor squeezed her wrist tightly enough to make her wince. Elizabeth yanked herself free.

“… passed last year,” she finished. “I wanted to write you so that you could attend the funeral, but I had no way to reach you.”

Victor looked away. He would have thought Igor would mention Alphonse Frankenstein’s death in a letter, but he had never received such news. He stared at the maple floors and said nothing. He wanted a glass of whisky instead of tea.  He wanted to feel something other than hate, but found he had run out of other emotions to expend upon his father.

“Good riddance.”

“If you had stayed in London,” Elizabeth said. “You would have inherited the barony.”

“I never wanted it,” Victor confessed. “I never wanted anything from him.”

“What is it you do here, anyways?”

“I am a doctor. I ply my trade.”

“Dr. Straussman says you do great work,” Elizabeth said. Then, smiling an playful smile Victor remembered well. “I’d expect nothing less from you.”

Victor smiled and again he was sixteen and shy, fumbling with his own fingers. There were few people who had ever believed in him. Henry, his mother, Igor… Elizabeth. But “thank you” was an impossible phrase for him in any language.

“What is it you’ve been doing in London?”

Elizabeth bit her lip. She was a pretty mystery – sad, conflicted. Victor could write poetry about the puzzling look upon her face, the way her palms pressed against each other, the tense radiation from her body.

“I married an earl,” she said quietly. “Lord Danvers Wrede.”

The man was easily twenty years Elizabeth’s senior. More, probably. Victor’s lips became a fine line as he tried to reconcile the image he remembered of Lord Wrede at Father’s functions with Elizabeth – who had been wild in her youth, running after Victor through fields of heather and making up fanciful stories to entertain, eating blueberries greedily until they stained her fingers, tending scraped elbows and knees with a mother’s diligence… He would always remember Wrede smoking a fat cigar and talking to the men about hunting, He was handsome in a hawkish way, known for winning illegal duels with angry husbands. 

“Congratulations,” Victor said flatly. “I hope you two are happy.”

“He was found in bed with Lady Pickering by Lord Pickering and shot dead two years ago.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Victor said. Again, his voice lacked warmth. He looked away from Elizabeth at the fireplace and wondered why she was here.

“Losing him was not a great loss,” Elizabeth said. She looked as if she was going to say more, but she stopped herself. She smiled and pressed her hand to Victor’s knee. “Losing you was a far greater loss to me.”

He wasn’t sure he understood her meaning. What purpose had she in flattering him? It would not persuade him to return to England. Warily, he turned to look at her. The way she stared at him now, with soft eyes was so vulnerable that Victor could only take her words in earnest. He licked his lips. Swallowed hard. Rose to his feet. He slammed his teacup onto the saucer on the little table beside the sofa. China clattered against china.

“Why did you come?” he asked. “I did not ask Igor to send for you-“

“No, you did not,” she said. “Which is why I took it upon myself to come to you.”

“What do you want from me, Elizabeth?” he asked. “Or is it _Countess Wrede_ , nowadays-?”

“I did not come here to be mocked by you.” Elizabeth’s teacup hit its own saucer noisily as she rose. “And if that is how you plan to treat me, I promise you I will be gone by dawn.”

“Why did you come?”

“Seven years ago,” Elizabeth said. Her voice was low, chilling. “My fiancé disappeared without a word. Every scrap of news I could find about him contained frightful flights of fancy – monsters in Scotland, murders in the circus – but nothing brought me closer to finding you. I would have waited for you forever, but your father-“

Victor hissed.

“- and I believed you dead after a year. And so, when Lord Wrede courted me, I accepted his proposal with the certainty that my heart had died with my beloved Victor. I spent three years in a miserable marriage with little consolation before my fool husband crossed the wrong man. I expected nothing to ever bring me joy again. And then your Dr. Straussman sought me out, showed me some of your correspondence. And I should have felt joy – I confess that I did. I have loved none but you. But, it seems, the person you most love, dear cousin, is yourself. Why else would you abandon such a good friend as Dr. Straussman to face the rigors of London society alone? Why else would you never write me? I always believed you above such selfishness-“

“Selfishness!” Victor snarled. “You think that staying in England would have been the better part of valor, then? You think Igor would have been able to join London society with my scientific failings looming over his head? Do you think he could have married that damned girl if I had stayed?”

“Is that it, then?” Elizabeth’s lips parted. “I suspected you might have loved him, but…”

“He is my dearest friend. My _only_ friend.”

“Indeed,” Elizabeth said. “It does not bother me if you love another – truly, all I ever wished for you is the greatest of happiness. What does concern me is how truly miserable you are.”

“I have my practice,” said Victor. “I don’t need anything else to be happy.”

“You’re lonely.” Elizabeth stepped towards him, closing the chasm between them. “Who can blame you? This is no way to live… travelling from place to place… alone and without means…”

Victor tensed as Elizabeth again brushed her hand through his hair. His skin buzzed with electricity and he studied her with furious curiosity. Who was she to insinuate that he loved Igor? Who was she to touch him? And who was she to think for even a moment that she might have some sway over his feelings? Her hand rested upon his cheek and he leaned against her palm and shut his eyes. She was angry, but so gentle. She was familiar, but strange and beautiful. He had forgotten what it was to be touched so willingly… So softly…

“What is your point?” he murmured.

“I promised my beloved aunt that I would marry my childhood sweetheart,” Elizabeth murmured. “I see now that that boy is lost to me… but something of him remains. And what remains deserves my love, my protection… Perhaps even one day my heart once more. Victor… I came to you today to ask for your hand in marriage.”

Victor’s eyes flew open. He withdrew from her hand and stared at Elizabeth. She must have been escaping scandal of some sort in England. Why else would a widowed countess travel hundreds of miles to seek a life as a doctor’s wife? Why else would _Elizabeth_ seek _Victor_ out? He could offer her nothing and – if what she said was true, if he loved another – what happiness did she hope to find at his side? He could offer her nothing. Already she had wasted so much of her life tending to his black moods, his injuries and wounded pride. Did she not wish to be free? Had she considered that perhaps he did not want a wife? That another person in his life might slow him down, impede his research, prevent him from doing his great work? He struggled for words.

“I have never known a woman to ask a man for his hand,” he said. There was a familiar impishness in his voice that he hadn’t control of. “I find your forward thinking refreshing.”

“Do you accept, then?”

“Of course not,” Victor said. He paused. “What do you really want from me, Elizabeth?”

The pain etched onto her face startled him. Sometimes Victor forgot others were capable of deep, complex feelings; he certainly never thought anyone had deep, complex feelings regarding him. He was too polarizing for internal conflict. And yet-

“What I want doesn’t matter,” Eilzabeth said. “What I want is an impossible fantasy. What I am willing to have, though, is the company of the only man who might inspire feeling in me. I am willing to give you the companionship you need and the financial backing your great work deserves.”

“What do you know of my work?”

“You are not a monster.” Elizabeth’s voice was gentle. “And I do not believe you ever sought to create monstrosities. But there is some truth in every rumor and if your letters to Dr. Straussman are to be believed, you have found a way to spare lives others could not. To save them and grant second chances. There is no nobler pursuit. But if your letters to Dr. Straussman are to be believed, you barely have the means to keep the clothes on your back. Look at you – look at your suit! You deserve better. So much better.”

“You wish to be my benefactor,” Victor muttered. “And yet you ask for my hand in marriage. I fail to see why you feel the need to be both.”

“You are not the only one who stands to gain from our union,” Elizabeth said. “With my inheritance from your father and the fortune my late husband left me, I am wealthy enough to help you resurrect hundreds of stillbirths. But I need something from you… Something I can get from only you.”

Victor sneered.

“Love?”

“Passion. Adventure. If love comes, I will be grateful, but practically, I know that I cannot ask you to love me as I have loved you. I do know, though, that there is no man on earth who could give me a life filled with more excitement than you. Marry me, Victor, and I will be your devoted assistant, your willing benefactress, your emotional crutch. So long as you fill my days with purpose and my nights with passion.”

The distance between them was impossibly small. Victor looked at her and wondered if he was the only one unrecognizable these days. The Elizabeth he knew dreamt of motherhood, domesticity, tender love. And here she was, begging him for everything but that. Involuntarily, he tilted her chin up with one hand and ran the other down her jaw, neck, throat. She arched towards him. It startled him how she responded like a sunflower turning towards the sky at dawn. He wondered what her years with Wrede had done to her, if they had squelched her old dreams and made her ache for something new. Her breath hitched suddenly. Victor thought she might speak, but instead her eyes shut.  She seemed ready for him to push her away.

“I am not the same boy you loved,” Victor said. “And whatever Igor’s told you, my ‘adventures’ are banal. I spend more time setting bones than I do resurrecting babies-“

“I don’t care,” murmured Elizabeth. “To know you again would be an adventure in itself.”

“I’m hardly of interest. I’m unfit for human company.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’m-“

She kissed him, pulling him in by his hair. Victor might have expected the kiss to be clumsy, but instead it was scorching as he realized how touch-starved he was and how soft Elizabeth’s skin was on his. Her kiss was hot, demanding and it occurred to him that just as he was not the boy she had loved; she was no longer the girl he remembered. Time had forged her bones to steel and her blood was fire, even if her eyes remained soft and clear. Was she as touch-starved as he? Did she lay in a bed back in London – big and empty – and crave him beside her? He imagined her suddenly in his bed, curled against him. So warm. So soft. So real. Something he could reach out and touch. He had always thought his first kiss with Elizabeth would be chaste and sweet, but this kiss was insistent, eager. There were tears – hers and his – and teeth pressing into lips and tongues tangling with one another as if there was no possible way to get closer.

An hour later, laying together in front of the dying fire, cumbersome clothes shed about the cottage, Victor finally knew what it was to have a warm body curled against him. Elizabeth was not asleep, but rather, tracing abstract patterns against Victor’s bare chest. She seemed content in the silence, but silence was not Victor’s strong suit. He could scarcely see her in the fire light. Shadows danced across her face, making her seem like a thousand different women at once as the shifting light reconfigured her features. He wished he could read her, understand what she was thinking.

“You never accepted my proposal,” she said finally, just when Victor thought the silence couldn’t be made more unbearable. Elizabeth looked up at him expectantly.

He laughed – scoffed – and kissed her temple.

“I think I have,” he said. “In fact, I thought it was _obvious_ I had-“

“In my experience,” Elizabeth said, ice gathering in her voice. “Men are quite good at separating marriage and engaging in amorous congress.”

“And just how much experience do you have with men who _aren’t_ your late, philandering husband?”

Elizabeth fell silent.

“I don’t understand what it is you think you’re getting out of this arrangement,” Victor continued. “But tonight I have been offered companionship and resources from a woman so determined to see me happy, she would abandon everything familiar and comfortable about England to be a traveling doctor’s wife. …You do know it won’t be easy? The life I lead is not easy and I am not easy to love-“

“Oh, that I knew,” Elizabeth teased. “But all the same, I love you still. I think I always will.”

“Even if there have been others I have loved? Others I love right now?”

“I do not object to your love for Igor Straussman,” Elizabeth said. “I can only assume it was that love that motivated you to take his surname. In another time, perhaps all our fates would have been different. But in this time, he has his wife and you shall have me and it will be enough. We will make it suffice.”

Victor rested his head atop hers. Surely another woman would have recoiled from Victor and call him a sodomite and sinner. Surely another woman would have held jealousy in her heart and suspicion in her eyes. But not Elizabeth. She seemed… content. As if a pipe, clogged and fit to burst, had been repaired and years of pent up feelings and needs came rushing forward. He, too, felt at peace. As if something inside him had been released from its confines.

“I won’t do a church service,” Victor said.

“Germany has a wonderful precedent for civil marriages. I’m sure we can find a government official to perform the ceremony.”

“You’ll want me to begin using my old surname again, won’t you?”

“Well,” Elizabeth said. “There is another Mrs. Straussman with whom you are well-acquainted and I _would_  so hate for you to confuse the two of us.”

He laughed and he couldn’t remember the last time had had laughed. It must have been with Igor. For a moment, he felt more like himself than he had in seven years. 

And so he kissed her again imagining how the name Elizabeth Frankenstein might taste in his mouth a week from now.


End file.
